UK fintechs have been on the receiving end of some huge venture capital injections this year, as investors seek to tap into the growing trend – but London-based Curve has taken a different approach to raising funds for its smart app and payment card.

Last month, it announced plans launch a “seven-figure crowdfunding campaign” through the Crowdcube platform, in which individual investors would be able to take a stake in the start-up for as little as £10.

Within 42 minutes, Curve had quadrupled its initial fundraising target, passing the £4m crowdfunding mark and becoming the fastest-ever start-up to do so.

CEO and founder Shachar Bialick said: “Curve customers are the beating heart of Curve and the unprecedented success of our first ever funding round demonstrates their faith in the business and shows the world that people are ready for a revolution in finance.

“We have been blown away by this record breaking investment from the Curve community, and we are delighted to welcome them on board our mission to move banking to the cloud and change the world of finance forever.”

At the time of writing, the personal finance disruptor had almost £6m ($7.2m) – with more than 9,500 individual investors taking part in the campaign.

Curve labels itself an “over the top” banking platform, which aggregates multiple cards and accounts into a single “smart card” and mobile app.

Here we take a closer look at Curve to see why so many individual investors have been rushing in to claim a stake in the company.

History of the Curve card and app

Founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneur Bialick, Curve was conceived as a way to make managing multiple bank accounts simpler by enabling users to easily switch between various accounts while using just a single card.

Curve CEO and founder Shachar Bialick (Credit: Curve)

It launched fully across Europe in 2018 and, prior to this crowdfunding drive, had attracted more than £60m ($72.5m) in capital funding from investors including Gauss Ventures, Oxford Capital, Connect Ventures, SpeedInvest, Investec and Seedcamp.

Its team has grown from 49 staff in September 2018 to 160 across offices in London and Bristol today.